Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I respect what Senator Boswell had to say. It is a different point of view and it is wrong. All through history we have seen people who have not wanted to believe the mounting evidence of some coming catastrophe. We saw it before the Second World War. If you study the history of the Byzantine Empire you will see it in the 1450s in Constantinople, where there were those who believed that the angel in front of Sancta Sophia was going to protect them from the invading hordes. It did not.

Very often this attitude means that we do not prepare adequately to meet the challenge of the age. That is the question before all of us in this very worthwhile motion from Senator Milne. By the way, Senator Milne, when pointing to those figures that Senator Boswell is concerned about, was quoting the work of the German Advisory Council on Climate Change, which Professor Will Steffen from the Australian National University was quoting. That study says that the rich nations need to reduce their emissions to about four tonnes of CO2 per person by 2020. Right now Australia is emitting more than 27 tonnes per capita—in other words, we need to reduce emissions by more than 80 per cent by 2020. So, yes, the good senator who preceded me is right; he has his sums right. What is worrying is that because it is such a challenge to us the answer is, ‘We can’t do that, it’s too hard.’ We know that when there is a war between human beings economies can transform by 50 to 20 per cent within a matter of 12 months. The challenge to divert two per cent of our gross wealth to protecting ourselves from climate change is too much for many members of this place, and the people they represent, at the moment.

Senator Moore said that last year the majority voted down a plan for action but the plan for action that she cites, under the Rudd government, was a five per cent reduction—not a 20 or 40 per cent reduction—with a $20 billion price tag for taxpayers, which was going to transfer that money to polluters. It was not an action plan; it was a plan with ‘failure’ written all over it. We are very keen on making a success, post election, of the climate change committee, which has been agreed to by Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Greens. We will do everything we can, not only to make that work but to ensure that it meets the challenge that climate change gives us.

I read in the weekend press—and this might help solve some of the worries of Senator Boswell—that getting a carbon price is going to add billions to the economy. To put it another way, the carbon price will remove the restrictions on billions of dollars of investment in the economy—restrictions which are there because there has not been a carbon price to date. There are enormous economic benefits if we take the road of Sir Nicholas Stern and green up our economy and become a world leader, as the Germans have done, rather than a world laggard.

We should look at the effective carbon price that has been brought about through whatever measures. People may have seen the chart in the weekend press: Australia is way behind China and the UK. We are enormously back in the ranks, and we have a big job to do. But we will not do it by having a Wandoan coalmine in Queensland. That one coalmine is effectively going to increase Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 10 per cent. What is the point of working to reduce our emissions if we are simply going to sell coal which will make an even greater impact on the environment elsewhere in the world? We need a great deal of common sense and to make some hard decisions but the future of the nation and the rights of our grandchildren are dependent upon us getting this right.

Question agreed to.